| <Saturday Review January 26, 1856: Miss Murray’s Letters 
| on America>
| Having in a former notice occupied ourselves exclusively 
| with Miss Murray’s views on Slavery, we may now set that 
| topic aside, and indicate the other contents of her Letters 
| ~~ contents which can rouse no opposition, and which may 
| furnish very agreeable reading for persons of all shades of 
| opinion. the quality that most strikes us in these pates is 
| the perfect sincerity of the writer. She not only records her 
| actual impressions without trying to make them accord with 
| certain pre-conceived notions, but in her language there is 
| a perfect absence of that striving after effect which, 
| sometimes in the way of “smartness,” and sometimes in 
| the way of “smartness”, and sometimes in the way of 
| “profundity,” distorts the sentences of travel writers.
| The consequence of this truthfulness and simplicity is, that 
| we follow her through the States with that unmisgiving 
| pleasure with which we listen to a trusted and intelligent 
| friend pouring forth at the fireside the impressions of his 
| journeyings. A sensible and accomplished Englishwoman 
| tells us a sensible and pleasant story. There is nothing very 
| striking about it, nothing very novel; but we listen to the end 
| without a moment’s fatigue.
| Miss Murray first went to Boston, and seems to have been 
| quite charmed with her reception there: ~~ <q> </q>
| More extended observation, however, greatly chilled this 
| enthusiasm. The gratuitous rudeness which Americans so 
| commonly mistake for Republican independence, forced 
| itself too often on her notice; nor did the social condition of 
| the men and women present so pleasing an aspect when 
| she came to know more of it: ~~ <q> </q>
| And elsewhere: ~~ <q> </q>
| Respecting American hotels, we have this quiet but 
| conclusive sentence: ~~ <q> </q>
| Miss Murray not only kept her eyes open for men and 
| institutions ~~ her cultivated mind found abundance of 
| exercise in noting all the botanical, geological, and 
| zoological peculiarities which fell in her way. Botany seems 
| to be her favourite study, and the endless varieties 
| America presents are recorded with quiet enthusiasm. Had 
| her Letters been less unpretending, we might have 
| objected to the brief and catalogue style in which many of 
| her observations are made, and which renders them 
| intelligible only to the instructed. A little more description 
| would have greatly enhanced the interest of these notices. 
| here is a sentence about the maple trees: ~~ <q> </q>
| Miss Murray throws in, as if it were quite unimportant, the 
| qualification respecting our want of sufficient solar light; but 
| we believe that this is all important, for it is only under the 
| influence of solar light that the organic changes which 
| develope sugar ever take place. If our sun were powerful 
| enough to make maple sugar, maple sugar we should have 
| had long before this.
| We have no space for more quotations. Those already 
| given will serve to indicate pretty accurately the style and 
| staple of the work, but before sending our readers to it, we 
| must borrow, for the sake of naturalists, the following fact 
| about the cow-bird: ~~ <q> </q>
| It is less remarkable that the cow-bird should, in America, 
| manifest the same exceptional disregard to all maternal 
| duties that the cuckoo does in England, than that the 
| American linnet should be so cute and wide-awake. The 
| English linnet not only hatches the young intruder, but is so 
| excessively proud of the size of the young cuckoo, that she 
| neglects her own chicks to show it an improper favouritism.